


The Pilot's Accidental Daughter

by imaginary_golux



Series: Harlequin [2]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Demisexuality, Fluff and Smut, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Pining, sort of, the First Order are assholes okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-24
Packaged: 2018-10-04 07:08:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 11,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10271060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux
Summary: Poe is sent on a mission to scout a new First Order training base, deep in First Order space. There are a lot of things not to like about that, but the one that keeps bothering him is that he misses Finn.With thanks to BeautifulLights, who plotbunnied me.Beta by my ever-marvelous Best Beloved, Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw.





	1. Chapter 1

So of course Poe’s sent on a three-week mission the next morning.

He’d accuse General Organa of doing it on purpose if it weren’t for the genuine apology she gives him along with the assignment. And the war _does_ come first. Poe knows that, knows it down to his bones.

And even if he dies on this mission, at least he’ll have had one night in Finn’s arms. That’s...worth a hell of a lot, actually. Poe would go through fire and flood just for one of Finn’s _kisses_ \- a night in his arms is easily worth Poe’s life.

Not that he’s going to tell Finn that. Finn would probably object. Well, Poe would object to Finn going out to get himself killed, so that’s only fair.

But all appearances to the contrary, Poe is _not_ a romance heroine. He’s the Commander of the Resistance’s fighter pilots, and he’s a damned good spy. And he’s not going to die on this mission - not when Finn will be waiting for him to get back.

* 

“There’s another rumor,” General Organa says grimly, tapping the console in front of her distractedly. “But if it’s true, it’s not really one for the Pathfinders. I need someone who can be quick and quiet and - importantly - _not_ fall back on shooting as a first response.”

“I can be quick,” Poe says, grinning. “Though quiet’s not really my forte.”

“Yes, I know, Dameron,” General Organa sighs, but there’s a smile playing around the corners of her mouth, which is what Poe was aiming for. “Still.” She pushes a datachip across to him. “Go. Look. Come back and tell me what you see. _Don’t_ get caught. My nerves can’t take it.”

“General, your nerves are made of durasteel,” Poe says as he takes the chip. “It’d take more than me to fray them. But I won’t get caught. I promised Finn.”

“Good,” General Organa says. “Go.” Poe salutes, and obeys.

*

He studies the datachip in his own room, sitting on the edge of the still-rumpled bed with the smell of sex still hanging faintly in the air. It makes him blush and shiver and smile, the knowledge that Finn was _here_ , was in his bed, in his arms - is, now and always, in his heart, and he in Finn’s. That, at least, Poe isn’t worried about: Finn is loyal down to his bones, and if he’s chosen Poe, that’s not going to change. Poe can worry about anything and everything else in the galaxy, from whether he’s going to die on this mission to whether tomorrow’s breakfast is going to include blumfruit, to which he is painfully allergic, but he doesn’t need to worry about Finn’s steadfastness.

On the face of it, the mission is fairly straightforward. Go to the place, see what there is to see, report back. But the place in question is _deep_ in First Order-controlled space, and getting there is going to be a clusterfuck of hyperspace hops and reckless dodging, not to mention getting _out_ again. There’s a reason General Organa gave this assignment to the best pilot she’s got.

And once he gets there - apparently what he’s going to investigate is the possibility of an _entire new training base_ for Stormtroopers. The Resistance already knows - from Finn, in point of fact - that there are three main training bases. If there’s going to be a fourth, that says _bad_ things about the number of Stormtroopers the First Order is going to be able to put into the field in the next few years, and Poe is not such an optimist as to think the war will be over soon enough to render that particular worry moot.

“Alright, buddy,” he says quietly to BB-8, patting the little droid on the head. “Let’s go be quick and quiet and not get shot at, yeah?”

BB-8 burbles affirmatively, and Poe pushes himself to his feet. “But first,” he adds softly, “first I get to tell Finn I’m leaving.”

*

Finn’s face falls when Poe tells him, but then he wraps Poe up in a hug so tight and warm it feels like Poe’s completely surrounded by his lover, wholly safe in a way he almost never is in the middle of this dreadful war. “Be safe, and come home,” Finn tells him, and then kisses him hard and hot and almost desperate, a kiss that knocks the breath from Poe’s lungs and leaves him weak-kneed and reeling in its aftermath.

His lips are still tingling as he climbs into the nondescript little transport he’s been assigned for this mission and goes through the pre-flight checks. He finds himself reaching up to touch them every few seconds, marveling each time at how one kiss - _one kiss_ , when before yesterday he didn’t even see the _point_ in kissing - can leave him with such a desperate yearning in his chest.

No wonder people do crazy things for love.

*

The trip out to the possible new training base is nerve-wracking. Poe knew it was going to be, but he apparently underestimated the amount of gut-clenching terror he was going to have to deal with, because the First Order have upped the number of patrol ships they have just cruising around looking for trouble, and trouble is exactly what Poe _doesn’t_ want. He loses a whole day hiding in an asteroid belt while a patrol ship noses around the nameless system in which Poe’s gone to ground; he loses another two in frantic backtracking after the system where he pops out of hyperspace turns out to have not one not two but _three_ Star Destroyers in it, apparently in the middle of a set of wargames. Thankfully, he’s clever enough to have hopped in well outside the system boundaries, which gives him and BB-8 _just_ enough time to get the transport turned around and fling it back into hyperspace before anyone can come out and investigate, but it’s not a pleasant few minutes, and he spends the next little while taking deep, steady breaths to try and work the adrenaline out of his system. Normally he thrives on close calls and reckless maneuvers, but that’s when he’s in Black One, and can shoot back - in this little tub of a transport, with its one titchy little laser, well, he’s basically a sitting duck. His only defenses are speed and not being caught, and that’s _not_ the way he likes it.

So it takes him a week and three days to make the supposedly week-long trip to the putative base - a week and three days of fitful sleep and white-knuckling the controls on every hop - and by the time he reaches the right system, Poe is _already_ exhausted. And he’s - well, he’s trying not to distract himself by thinking of Finn, but he can’t help remembering how much _he_ worried when _Finn_ was three days late, and Poe is going to be at _least_ that much overdue. Maybe more. Maybe _much_ more.

But not, Poe promises himself firmly, forever. He _will_ get home to Finn, no matter what.

*

He puts the transport down on a moon so far outside the target system it’s nearly lost in deep space, and sleeps for ten hours straight, and wakes up feeling much better about life. BB-8 chirps cheerfully at him when he slides into the pilot’s seat; the little droid has been monitoring the communications within the system while Poe slept.

“Got me a safe path in, buddy?” Poe asks. BB-8 bloops an affirmative, and projects the necessary course up onto the viewscreen. It’s as twisty as a corkscrew and keeps Poe out of range of the automatic weapons emplacements by sometimes no more than a scant few yards, but it’s flyable. Poe grins. Now _this_ , this he can do, even in this old tub of a transport. He wasn’t boasting when he told Finn he could fly anything.

Well, not much.


	2. Chapter 2

He makes it down to the planet without being detected or shot at, which is good, but he has to land nearly ten miles from the buildings which are almost certainly a new training base, which is...less good. There’s no way to get closer using the transport, either. So Poe leaves the transport concealed against a cliff face, under a sheet of hanging vines, with BB-8 to guard it - the little droid’s taser is actually its _least_ deadly weapon, now that Poe has done some upgrades - and takes a week’s worth of rations and a couple of blasters, and sets off into the jungle.

As he makes his way through the tangled vines, trying his best not to leave a trail, Poe can’t help wondering how Finn would do in this sort of environment. Certainly the corridors of the _Finalizer_ were as bleak and sterile as deep space, and Starkiller wasn’t exactly a _jungle_ planet. Sort of the other thing. But Finn did pretty well on Jakku - how he made it all the way to Niima Outpost without any water is _still_ a constant wonder to Poe, who can’t help worrying that the First Order may have made some genetic adjustments to its soldiers, though it’s honestly just as likely that the Force which the General is teaching Finn to control had something to do with it - so maybe he was trained to deal with all sorts of different environments. Maybe he’d be just as comfortable here as he is in a war room, on an ice planet, on a Star Destroyer, behind a blaster. Maybe he’d _fit_ here, the way he fits into Poe’s heart.

...This is a bad time and place to distract yourself by being maudlin, Poe reminds himself firmly. Keep your mind on the job, Dameron, so you can make it home again.

He camps that night under in the hollow under a fallen tree, thanking his lucky stars that the bugs on this planet don’t seem interested in humans - there are a _lot_ of them, and if they _did_ like humans, he’d be covered in bites by now, which would be supremely unpleasant - and that it’s not raining torrentially.

Of course, it _starts_ raining torrentially in the middle of the night, but by that point he’s gotten nearly five hours of good solid sleep, and so huddling in the back of his hollow for the rest of the night while the rain pours down so loudly he can’t even hear himself speak is less of a hardship than it could be. Still not _fun_ , but not a catastrophe.

The rain clears up - or possibly just moves away - about an hour after dawn, and Poe eats his rations while the puddles turn to mist and the air gets steadily muggier, and then sets out again.

He reaches a bluff above the base by mid-afternoon, and hunkers down in the undergrowth, slithering forwards until he can see everything but - hopefully - not be seen himself, shielded by the riotous greenery. And then he settles in for the least interesting part of any given scouting mission: the waiting.

For the first few hours, the base below him is almost completely silent. There are guards on the single doorway, silent white-armored figures so still Poe almost wonders if they’re alive, or if they’re just armored droids, but otherwise there are no people within sight. But finally, as the sun begins to sink behind the distant mountains, a small horde of people emerges from one of the buildings into the square at the center of the base.

Two of the people are in officer’s uniforms, with the stupid little hats perched primly on their heads. The rest - nearly a hundred, Poe thinks, doing a quick rough headcount - are all in Stormtrooper undersuits, plain black fabric stark against the grey walls of the base.

None of the Stormtroopers can be older than _maybe_ fifteen. Poe bites his lip, hard, to keep from making any sound in his dismay. Yes, this is a training base, but somehow when Finn said he was stolen from his family and raised to be a Stormtrooper, Poe didn’t quite realize what that _meant_ \- didn’t realize that tiny teenage Finn would have been wearing Stormtrooper blacks and coming to perfect attention in front of cold-eyed officers, or at least didn’t realize it so _viscerally_.

There’s no way in _hell_ Poe is going to be able to shoot any of these tiny, brainwashed _children_ , even if he needs to. Which just means he has to do a very good job of not getting caught.

Below his hiding place, the young Stormtrooper cadets go through a well-practiced calisthenics routine, a hundred young bodies moving in perfect unison. It takes them about an hour to finish - Poe can see that some of the ones at the back are starting to droop by the time it’s done - and by the end of it, the sun has sunk beneath the horizon and a set of glaring floodlights has come on, illuminating the young cadets mercilessly. The officers prowl around them, snapping orders at this cadet or that who has fallen out of rhythm or messed up a movement. Poe winces every time. Even his instructors at the Academy were not so cold and cruel - and Poe was a man grown by the time he went to the Academy, not a child.

It’s honestly a miracle Finn came out as well-adjusted as he did. That, or the will of the Force.

*

Poe sleeps in a little hollow under a tree’s roots that night, and wakes, as he’d half expected, to pouring rain a few hours before dawn. It’s actually useful, or will be. He’s willing to wager that whatever sensors the First Order has up, they’re not going to be _nearly_ as good during the downpours. That much water will mess with even the best tech around. So if Poe _wants_ to get into that base - and he does, though not today - the best time to do so is going to be during the hours before dawn while it’s truly unpleasantly wet outside.

Which means Poe is going to end up drenched, but that’s life.

This morning, though, he waits until the rain is over and slinks back to his vantage point, and not a moment too soon. As soon as the rain has dried from the stone of the courtyard, another group of cadets is marched out for calisthenics, and Poe winces, hard, at the sight. These kids can’t be older than _ten_. They look nearly as accustomed to the routine as their older comrades, though, moving through the calisthenics with the ease of long habit. But they’re not _quite_ to the level of perfection that Poe is abruptly quite sure Finn must have achieved. One of the cadets overbalances, falls to her knees, and Poe watches with his hands clenched into fists as one of the officers descends on her like the wrath of a particularly vindictive god. The girl pulls herself to attention in front of the officer as he screams at her - Poe can’t quite make out the words, but he can definitely hear the vitriol in the tone - and then falls neatly to her hands and toes and performs ten absolutely form-perfect pushups before scrambling back to her feet and falling into place again, imitating her comrades as they switch to a new stretch.

The cadets trot back into the building after an hour, and Poe shifts a little, trying to get a rock out from where it’s digging uncomfortably into his kidney, when yet another group of cadets emerges, and he has to slide back until he can’t see and rest his forehead on the ground and take slow, deep breaths so he doesn’t _scream._ These children - these children cannot be any older than five. Poe has a _cousin_ that age, one he dandled on his knee and taught to say “X-Wing” when she was very small, and he cannot bear to look at these children no older than Beata and know that they are being molded - brainwashed - _tortured_ into becoming the sort of soldiers who will kill an entire village of innocents on an officer’s bare word.

But General Organa didn’t send him out here to lie with his face in the dirt and weep, so Poe takes one more deep breath and slides forward again, leaves catching on his hair, until he can see the cadets in their courtyard. He doesn’t watch them, though - cannot bear to see them fall and be berated until they rise again - but instead studies the buildings that make up this base.

There are four of them, set in a square around the calisthenics courtyard. One is nestled nearly up against the base of the cliff below him, and Poe can’t see much of it. The other three are squat, grey, brutal things; there has clearly been no effort put forth to make them look anything other than industrial and utilitarian. Poe tries to imagine growing up in a place like this, where the only beauty around is the jungle and _that_ is not visible except during calisthenics hour, and winces at the thought. What must it be like, to have everything around you be shades of grey and black and white, except _maybe_ the hair and skin of your comrades - and even then, the cadets’ hair is cut so short it’s hard to tell what color it is. Ease of cleaning, Poe assumes. Or one more way to dehumanize them. Probably both, knowing the First Order. Both would be _efficient._

Poe is sort of starting to hate that word.

Given what Finn has told Poe about the First Order’s training bases, probably three of the buildings are combination barracks and classrooms. The first floor of the fourth is almost certainly evenly divided between a cafeteria and a gymnasium, and the second floor of that one is officers’ quarters and offices. Which means that’s the one Poe needs.

If he had to guess - which he does - he’d guess it’s the one to his right, the only one with an outward-facing door, where the two Stormtroopers are standing guard. Poe has no idea if they’re the _same_ two Stormtroopers, though he doubts it. Not even Stormtroopers are made to pull twenty-four hours shifts. It’d be an inefficient use of resources.

Two Stormtroopers. One epic rainstorm. No problem.


	3. Chapter 3

He goes back to his tree-root hollow early that evening, because he’s going to be getting up _far_ too early the next morning. The fact that that means he doesn’t have to watch the oldest cadets at their exercises is - not something Poe _planned_ , but it’s probably good. He’s not sure how much more he can _take_ , of seeing these children suffer. Of knowing that someday they will be grown into Stormtroopers, strapped into white armor, and they will walk into battle against Poe and his friends, and he will have to shoot them down.

Unless the Resistance wins the war first. Unless the officers who stalk so cruelly through the lines of children are dead, and there is no one to give them orders. Unless, unless, unless.

It’s a good thing Poe learned years ago how to sleep when he needs to, because otherwise he’d keep himself up all night while his mind races frantically around and around. Unless, unless, unless.

As it is, he wakes when the rainstorm starts, and goes slithering out of his shelter into the downpour with a grimace. The rain isn’t _cold_ , so that’s something, at least, but within a few meters Poe is honestly not sure whether he’s walking or swimming. The air is almost _solid_ with water droplets. He can’t see more than a few feet even _with_ the night-vision goggles, and he has to pull his shirt up over his mouth so he can breathe. It’s...astonishingly unpleasant.

Getting down the bluff is not as simple as it looked from the top, and Poe ends up getting to the bottom by the simple if rather painful expedient of sliding the last hundred yards or so on a big leaf of some sort that he stepped on by accident. He fetches up against the side of the building with a _thud_ that rattles his bones, and sits there for a minute blinking dazedly. Nothing’s broken, thank the Force, and his bruises will heal. He picks himself up, grimacing at the mud, and then watches in mild amusement as the downpour washes his clothing clean again in moments. That’s something, at least.

The Stormtroopers are standing right where Poe expected them, rain sheeting off of their armor. Even knowing they’re his enemies, Poe can’t help a wince of sympathy. Not that he’s any drier, but at least he doesn’t have to worry about wet armor chafing. Or mold. He’s willing to bet that they have to clean their armor every day to get the mold off.

Standard Stormtrooper gear, Poe knows from Finn’s briefings, does not include night-vision gear. There _is_ a floodlight above the door, but in this rain it serves more to highlight the raindrops than anything else - the endless shattering reflections are almost dizzying. Poe grimaces, sets his blaster to its lowest power setting, and puts his back to the wall, sidling as slowly and carefully as he can towards the Stormtroopers staring blankly out into the storm.

They aren’t looking at the building behind them, of course, and Poe knows - again from Finn - that the helmets do a real number on the wearer’s peripheral vision. That’s part of why so many Stormtroopers are abysmal shots. Between the darkness and the rain, by the time Poe is close enough that they _could_ see him, he’s also well out of their field of vision. He gets close enough, in fact, that he can put his blaster right up behind the first one’s helmet and knock the poor kriffer out with a single, near-silent shot.

Of course, when the Stormtrooper _collapses,_ that gets the other one’s attention; but Poe was expecting it and the second Stormtrooper wasn’t, so Poe manages to knock him out, too, before he can do more than start to turn and see what’s going on.

Poe thought, while he was planning this, about stealing the armor from one of them and pretending to be a Stormtrooper - the tactic has a long history of success, after all, and part of Poe yearns to follow in the footsteps of Luke Skywalker and Han Solo themselves - but he’s pretty sure that there aren’t many Stormtroopers on this base, not full-grown ones, and so seeing one out of place would actually _draw_ attention. So he tugs them into the dubious shelter of the building and takes off their helmets so they won’t drown, stacking the heavy things neatly out of the way, and then he slips quietly through the unlocked door, into the First Order’s newest training base.

The lights are dim, and Poe takes the night-vision goggles off and stows them carefully. Here goes nothing, he thinks. Force, be with me now.

*

The thing is, he’s pretty sure he’s in the right building, but once he gets upstairs he’s going to be navigating blind. The cadets, according to Finn, only go up to officers’ quarters when ordered, and Finn was never ordered. Poe grimaces at the memory of the look on Finn’s face during that briefing. “It wasn’t - it was never good, to be summoned up to the officers’ quarters,” he’d said quietly. “They only ever chose the cadets who were doing badly. And sometimes - sometimes the chosen ones didn’t come back.”

So Poe can’t really regret the fact that Finn knows nothing about the officers’ quarters except that they exist, and a rough idea of where they’re located, but it _does_ make Poe’s current task a little more difficult than it could be. Still, that’s why the General sent _Poe_ , right? Because he’s good at improvising?

He makes it all the way up the staircase to a blank white corridor, nondescript doors opening off it that hopefully lead to officers’ quarters and offices, when there’s a sudden, immensely loud _bell_. Poe about levitates. But it only rings once, so it’s not an alarm - in fact, if Poe had to guess, he’d guess it’s the morning wake-up call.

Which means there are going to be officers in this corridor _very soon_.

Poe spins around, looking for cover, and spots one door with a neat plaque on it which reads, thank the Force, _Cleaning Supplies._ He’s inside the closet before he can even think twice about it, closing the door carefully and hoping desperately that it does not lock from the outside, because that would be - unpleasant.

It doesn’t seem to lock, though, so he takes a slow, deep breath of relief and sags back against the shelves behind him. Scant seconds later, he hears the unmistakable click of dozens of boots in the hallway outside. How many officers are there, anyhow? He’s only _seen_ six, but come to think of it there must be some who oversee the individual classes, and the gymnasium exercises - Finn didn’t know how many officers there were at _his_ training base, only that there were more than he ever saw.

So, six minimum, maybe twenty-four maximum. Sort of steep odds, if Poe gets caught, even if he does have surprise on his side. So he’ll just have to not get caught. And hey, they _should_ all be down doing officer-like things all day, overseeing their brainwashing procedures and all that, so Poe should have entire _hours_ to mess around in their offices and see what he can find.

Hopefully.

The clack of boots dies away down the staircase, and Poe realizes he’s standing in a puddle. Oh, right, he’s dripping wet. It’s a damn good thing none of the officers thought to wonder _why_ there was a trail of water up the stairs. Shit, what an _amateur_ mistake.

Well, he’s in a supply closet - presumably there are towels? He pats around on the shelves carefully, and glory be, there _is_ in fact a stack of neatly folded towels. Poe takes one and dries himself off as best he can, then has to take another, because ‘soaked to the skin’ doesn’t even _begin_ to describe it. He was drier than this when he was literally _showering with Finn._

...Not that he needs to be thinking about that right now.

He waits the slow count of five hundred after the last sound of bootheels has died away before he dares crack open the closet door and peer out. The corridor is empty. It’s actually a little odd that no one has noticed the unconscious Stormtroopers out front - but if their shift is, say, midnight until two hours after dawn, and no one checks on them until shift change, Poe has at least another hour until they’re noticed and the alarm is raised.

He grabs another towel and mops up the water trail he’s left leading to the closet, then leaves it to soak up the puddle he left on the closet floor and pads quietly down the corridor, looking at the door plaques carefully. The First Order are efficient bastards - surely they’ve labeled all their rooms?

Yes, yes they have. Poe pauses in front of the door marked, simply, _Commandant_ , and grins. Target acquired.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where those warning tags at the top go into effect, though I promise nothing bad happens onscreen.

Poe eases the door open very carefully, all senses alert in case the Commandant has booby-trapped his door. But no alarms ring, no lights flash. Why _would_ the Commandant trap his door, after all, here in the middle of a secure base on an unknown planet deep in First Order-controlled space? It’s not as though a Resistance spy could ever _dream_ of getting this close…

Don’t get cocky, Poe Dameron, Poe reminds himself firmly. That’s how you get caught, and you want to get home to Finn, right? Of course right. Finn promised to ravish you, and that is damn well going to happen, unless of course you get your fool head shot off. So _don’t_.

The room Poe eases into is an office, spare and unwelcoming. The desk is completely clean, as Poe’s own desk _never_ is. Poe slides into the chair and tugs out one of the drawers, frowning hopefully, and _yes_ \- the drawer is full of datapads, each neatly labeled and filed in order of date received, newest first. Force bless First Order efficiency, which is making Poe’s life so much easier.

He copies the first ten datapads onto chips without reading them - it’s enough that they’re recent, the information will be valuable _whatever_ it is - and then flips through the rest, choosing only the ones that look most vital. The chip the General sent with him only has so much memory, after all.

He’s done in half an hour or so, and tucks the chip away in its protected pouch carefully. That’s step one done; step two is getting the kriff out of here without being caught. But first - it’s not _likely_ that this efficient bastard of a Commandant would keep an important datapad in his bedroom instead of neatly filed, but Poe has to check. If there _is_ a datapad in the bedroom, it’s even odds whether it’s vital information or recreational reading, but still. If Poe misses something because he didn’t think to check the bedroom, he’ll be kicking himself for _years_.

The bedroom door is half open, and Poe eases through it, glancing around. To his mild surprise, the bed is not made - it’s rumpled, the covers all heaped up. Surely an efficient bastard like the Commandant would make his bed in the morning, all military corners and sharp folds? Or maybe he leaves it for the cleaning crew? There must be a cleaning crew, if there’s a supply closet - Poe can’t imagine First Order officers doing their _own_ cleaning.

And there _is_ a datapad on the bedside table. Poe makes a beeline for it.

It’s not labeled, which means either too important to label or recreational reading too _unimportant_ to label, so Poe thumbs it on and glances over at the bed again while he’s waiting for it to boot up.

...There’s someone in the bed.

Poe goes utterly still, not even breathing. There is _definitely_ someone in the bed, curled up in a little ball under the rucked-up covers, their head just barely on the edge of the pillow and mostly covered by the blanket, so all Poe can see is a bit of ear. It doesn’t look like a comfortable position.

Whoever it is is breathing deep and slow, the breathing of someone so thoroughly asleep they didn’t hear the _bong_ of the wake-up alarm, or whatever noise the Commandant might have made while getting up. Are First Order officers allowed to bring their spouses along?

Very, very carefully, Poe leans forward, and millimeter by millimeter he lifts the covers to reveal the body beneath.

And then he bites his lip to keep from swearing so loudly it would _echo_.

*

It’s a kid. It is, if Poe is not mistaken, the same girl-child who fell during training yesterday. Finn’s remembered words ring in his ears: “They only ever chose the cadets who were doing badly. And sometimes - sometimes the chosen ones didn’t come back.” This poor girl - Poe can see bruises everywhere he looks, in shades of blue and purple and green and yellow, some newer ones overlaying old ones so that her pale skin is a patchwork of pain. No wonder she can’t keep up with the other cadets. It’s a wonder she can even _walk_.

_Sometimes the chosen ones didn’t come back._

If she stays here, she’ll die. Poe knows that, viscerally, the way he knows a shot is going to go true or a maneuver is going to succeed. She’s maybe ten years old and she’s going to die in this bleak, horrible place, and no one will even bother to remember.

Poe - can’t. He can’t leave her here. What sort of man would he be, to leave a ten-year-old girl to be beaten to death in this terrible place? But - kriff, kriff, _kriff_. He _has_ to get this information to the General, which means he has to survive to do it, and getting back to his ship through ten miles of jungle, undetected, while carrying either an _unconscious_ ten-year-old or a _conscious_ one who’s likely to be fighting him every step of the way - that’s a damn good way to get himself caught.

What would Finn do? Poe asks himself wildly, and the answer is there waiting. Finn went back into his greatest fear, knowing he didn’t even have a _plan_ , because a girl he’d met not two days before was being held captive. Finn would bring the child out, come hell or high water.

Well then.

Poe glances down at the datapad half-forgotten in his hand. _...Asheara sighed as she leaned against Calen’s arm. “You_ know _I didn’t mean it,” she said plaintively._ Kriff, even First Order Commandants read bad romance novels? Poe asks himself incredulously, and puts it down gently on the table, then pads around the bed to stand beside the sleeping girl.

She’s far too light, he discovers when he lifts her, carefully, into a shoulder carry. She’s limp, so deeply asleep Poe suspects he could drop her without waking her, and her head lolls on his shoulder pathetically. Kriff, what is he _doing?_ \- but he can’t do anything else, not and still be able to look at himself in the mirror. He gets her arranged as comfortably as possible, legs over one shoulder and head and arms dangling over the other, and heads for the door.

*

He steps out into the hall just as the cleaning crew arrives, because of _course_ he does. The cleaning crew, apparently, is a squad of the oldest cadets, and they stop dead in the middle of the corridor, staring at him. Poe stares back, not sure what to do. He _can’t_ shoot them, and even if he wanted to, his hands are full - drawing his blaster would probably mean dropping the child, and that would not go well.

One of the cadets takes a single step forward, eyes locked on Poe. He’s tall and gangly, and his skin has a faint greenish tinge that hints at a home planet very far from here. “Who are you?” he asks, quietly.

“My name is Poe Dameron,” Poe says, not seeing any point in lying.

“What are you doing with her?” the cadet demands, eyes flicking to the sleeping child on Poe’s shoulders.

Poe takes a deep breath. “I’m taking her somewhere she’ll be safe, and no one will hurt her again,” he says solemnly.

The cadet considers this carefully, then glances at his squadmates. Poe sees their fingers flicker, and realizes they are talking in the finger-speech that Finn has mentioned once or twice, the only way for Stormtroopers to talk without their officers overhearing. Then the leader turns back to Poe.

“Go,” he says flatly. “Take her to safety. We can give you half an hour before we must raise the alarm.”

To say Poe is startled would be an understatement. “Thank you,” he says softly. “And - kriff. I’ll come back. I’ll come back for the rest of you, and take you to safety, too. I _swear_ it.” It’s a foolish oath to give, and he knows it when he gives it, but - but these children are protecting each other, are trying to be good even when everything around them is molding them towards evil, and Poe can’t help it.

The lead cadet nods solemnly, and Poe shifts the child a little higher on his shoulders and steps forward, walking past the silent squad towards the staircase. A thought strikes him just as he reaches the top of the stairs, and he turns.

“What is your name?” he asks the lead cadet. The cadet looks at him solemnly for a long, long moment.

“My designation is PT-1342,” he says quietly. “But my squad calls me Point.”

“Thank you, Point,” Poe says softly, and turns, and goes.


	5. Chapter 5

He makes it out the main doors, past the still-unconscious Stormtroopers, and all the way up the bluff into the shelter of the jungle before the alarm rings out from the base behind him. It’s loud, even from up here, and Poe is briefly worried that the child is going to wake up, but she doesn’t even twitch. He settles her a little more firmly on his shoulders and takes off at a trot, half an eye on the little tracker that lets him know where BB-8 and the transport are waiting. Ten miles in a day is easy - Poe could normally walk that in a couple, maybe three hours - but ten miles through thick jungle with a child on his shoulders and an entire base of First Order cadets on his heels? This is going to be _interesting_.

And by interesting he means _kriffing awful_.

Poe does his best not to leave a trail, but the ground is wet and he can’t quite help leaving footprints where there isn’t any moss to cushion his steps. If the cadets are any good at tracking, they’ll figure out where he’s been pretty quickly, and while Point gave him a head start, Poe’s pretty sure the cadet won’t be able to deflect the scouting parties at all.

On the other hand - there are maybe two dozen officers, probably ten or twelve Stormtroopers, and three hundred cadets in the base. The five-year-olds and ten-year-olds not only won’t be any use in tracking Poe, they’ll need minders. That leaves a hundred fifteen-year-olds and whichever Stormtroopers and officers are not needed to mind the younger cadets. Presumably they won’t trust the cadets to hunt him down by themselves, so either they’ll be split up into small groups, each with an officer leading, or the officers will leave _all_ the cadets back at base and just come out with the fully-trained Stormtroopers.

...And trying to figure out how many Stormtroopers are on his tail is not going to help with the whole getting-the-kriff-away part of this plan. Poe puts it firmly out of his mind and increases his pace a little, hoping he’s not jarring the poor child too badly.

There’s no way he’s going to be able to run the whole way, of course. He’s in decent shape - has to be, to be part of the Resistance, and the pilots do tend to get rather competitive in the weight room or while racing each other around the base, so Poe’s stamina isn’t _bad_ , precisely, but running for two hours with sixty pounds on his back is not something Poe has trained for. Finn probably has. If Finn was here, he’d probably be going twice as fast and not even _noticing_ the weight of the child. He’d probably have his _strategy_ face on, running through every possible permutation of events and planning a response to each one.

Which, admittedly, would have the effect of making Poe want to push him up against a tree and kiss him, which would not do good things for their ability to run. So maybe it’s just as well Finn isn’t here.

...Oh, kriff that, it’s _never_ a good thing for Finn not to be at Poe’s side. Poe shakes his head at his own silliness, dodges another tree, and keeps going.

*

He reaches the transport by noon, out of breath and soaked with sweat, with a stitch in his side that throbs with every step - but he _does_ reach it, and without Stormtroopers right behind him. BB-8 opens the door for him with a burble of greeting, and then squeaks in surprise at the sight of the child slung over Poe’s shoulders.

“Long story, tell you once we’re in hyperspace,” Poe pants, and ducks down the tiny hallway to put his limp burden on his bunk, then scrambles back up into the pilot’s seat. “Got me a course out of here? I suspect we’re going to have company soon.”

BB-8 beeps indignantly and projects the course up onto the viewscreen. Poe grins wearily.

“Good work, buddy,” he says, taking one hand off the controls to pat the little droid’s head. “Alright then. Here we go!”

He takes the transport up in a corkscrewing path which _should_ make it harder for anyone on the ground to hit him, and sure enough there are half a dozen blaster shots before he’s well clear of the jungle, but then he’s up out of the atmosphere and making for the system limits at the best speed this little ship can go, and BB-8 has the calculations for their first hyperspace hop, and he _did it,_ stars and planets, he actually did it, they’re safe.

...Well, okay, there’s still the week’s journey back to the Resistance, and that’s assuming they don’t run into any trouble, but still. He’s off the planet, and didn’t even get shot a _little_. Score one for Poe Dameron. Take that, you efficient bastards, he thinks at the distant First Order officers. Improvisation for the _win_.

*

Once they’re in hyperspace, he takes the opportunity to duck into the tiny refresher and get _clean_ , which, after several days in the jungle muck and a two-hour run, is an _immense_ relief. His clothing, he notes when he climbs out of the shower again, reeks like a two-week-dead bantha, and he drops it into the little sonic cleaner with a grimace and wraps a towel securely around his hips, grabbing another to dry his hair.

He’s actually in his bunkroom, standing in front of the tiny closet, when he realizes his mistake. There’s a very soft sound behind him, a tiny terrified inhale, and Poe puts a hand over his face and winces. Kriff, he forgot about the _kid_.

He grabs a change of clothing out of the closet and turns around, one hand _firmly_ on his towel. “Hi,” he says, to the girl huddled at the back of the bunk, staring wide-eyed at him, her hands white-knuckled on the blanket wrapped around her. “Give me five minutes to put some clothing on, please?”

She nods minutely, and Poe escapes to the bathroom and uses two of his five minutes in berating himself mentally for being such an _idiot_ as to not think that she might wake up. Surely he could have remembered to bring clean clothing into the bathroom - or to send BB-8 to get it - _anything_ so he wouldn’t traumatize the poor thing even more.

Then he gets dressed, runs a comb perfunctorily through his hair, and steps out of the refresher to face his fate.

The girl is still huddled on his bunk, and Poe considers his options for a minute, then leans back against the farther wall, leaving as much space between them as possible. “So,” he says. “I’m Poe Dameron.”

The girl’s eyes get wider. Poe sighs. “Yes, that Poe Dameron, though I’m going to guess whatever you’ve heard about me is either exaggerated or outright lies. I - um - kidnapped you from the First Order, I guess, although frankly I think ‘rescued’ is a lot more accurate. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m going to take you someplace you’ll be safe, and no one will hurt you. Okay?”

No response, but a tiny bit of the tension goes out of the girl’s posture. Well, that’s something. Poe takes a deep breath. “So,” he says again. “Are you hungry?”

That earns him a tiny, tentative nod. Poe nods back and ducks out of the room, returning with a wrapped ration bar that he tosses gently onto the bunk in front of her. “Eat up,” he says. She gives him a startled look, then unwraps the bar and devours it in a few quick bites. Poe wracks his brain for what Finn told the Resistance, weeks ago, about the common forms of punishment in the First Order. Would they have deprived the child of food? Or is this just that she missed breakfast - and lunch, come to think of it - because she was slung over Poe’s shoulder instead of lined up with her comrades?

“Right,” he says, when the ration bar is gone. “Still hungry?”

A tiny headshake.

“Need the refresher?”

Tiny nod.

“Okay then. Refresher is out the door, across the hall. Cockpit is to your right as you come out of the refresher, kitchen’s to the left. There’s bacta in the cupboard in the refresher, and I’d like you to use it, please. When you’re done in the refresher, you can come back here and close the door, and I won’t come in, or you can come find me in the cockpit, and I’ll answer any questions you have - within reason, anyhow, and as long as they’re not classified. Okay?”

Another tiny nod. Poe nods back and leaves the room, taking the scant few steps to the cockpit and sinking down into the pilot’s seat with a sigh. Behind him, there’s a long pause, and then quick scampering steps as the child ducks from the bunk to the refresher. The refresher door _snicks_ shut.

“I’m kind of an idiot sometimes,” Poe tells BB-8, who burbles laughter back at him. “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, buddy. A week in hyperspace with a traumatized baby Stormtrooper. There’s no _possible_ way this could go wrong.”


	6. Chapter 6

Poe is, quite honestly, expecting the child to retreat into the bunkroom and not come out except to use the refresher and raid the kitchen. He probably would, in her case. But he hears the shower shut off after a few minutes, and then the creak of the cabinet door as the child looks for the bacta, and then several minutes later the refresher door slides open and there’s the soft pad of bare feet on the deck as the child walks - slowly but steadily - into the cockpit.

Poe swivels the pilot’s seat around to face her, not wanting to get up and loom over her. Her face is taut with apprehension, and she’s not wearing anything - kriff, he forgot to tell her he could raid the closet, he’s just not cut out for this sort of thing, he’s such an _idiot_ sometimes - but she meets his eyes squarely and doesn’t flinch. “My designation is QL-1803,” she says, voice soft but clear. “I have no information of value.”

“I didn’t think you did,” Poe says slowly. “You’re _ten_. Also, please go put on - um - a shirt or something, I have spares.”

She blinks at him in confusion, but then she turns and goes padding back into the bunkroom, emerging a few minutes later in one of his shirts. It’s a dress on her, thank goodness, the hem falling nearly to her knees and the sleeves rolled up around her too-skinny wrists.

Poe nods approvingly. “Have you got a nickname?” he asks, when she stands to attention in front of him again.

“Clumsy, sir,” she says quietly. Poe winces a little. But - Finn had mentioned that having a nickname was a sign that a Stormtrooper was accepted among their comrades. And the cadets let Poe go because he was trying to get her to safety. So - it’s not an insult, really. It’s a sign that she’s one of them, in a way Finn, with no nickname, never was.

“You don’t have to call me ‘sir,’” he says, a little awkwardly. “I’m - well, okay, I’m an officer, but technically I’m an _enemy_ officer, so - you can just call me Poe. Or Dameron. Whichever.”

“You are the Commander of the Resistance fighter pilots,” the girl - kriff, he can’t call her Clumsy, it’s just rude - says. “Officers must be addressed with respect.”

Poe scrubs a hand over his face. “I - um - well. If it makes you more comfortable to call me ‘sir,’ then I can live with it.”

There’s a brief silence, and then the girl says, so softly Poe has to strain to hear her, “Why did you take me, sir?”

Poe sighs. “Because you’re a child, and you were - you were hurting, and I could not bear to leave you there to be hurt again.”

“I am a Stormtrooper cadet, not a child, sir,” the girl says. Poe shakes his head.

“How old are you?” he asks.

“Ten standard years, sir.”

“Yeah, that’s a child,” Poe says wearily. “And one of the things that makes the Resistance different from the First Order is that we don’t turn children into soldiers. So.” He shrugs. “You may be a crack shot and be able to - I don’t know - run an obstacle course in full armor, but you are a child, and that means that, as an adult, it’s my job to protect you. It’s a - it’s sort of a rule, where I come from.”

“...Yes, sir,” the girl says, and Poe sighs again, and he’s not sure how long they would have kept staring at each other, but thankfully BB-8 burbles a warning that they’ll be dropping into normal space again for a course correction in three minutes, and Poe has to turn and concentrate on his controls instead.

*

Poe cedes the bunkroom to his unexpected passenger, of course. He doesn’t even go in after one last foray to clean most of his clothing out of the closet, leaving a couple of shirts for the girl to wear - he still can’t bear to call her Clumsy in his head - and storing the rest of it under the pilot’s chair out of the way. The pilot’s seat reclines a little, so he _can_ sleep in it, though admittedly it gives him a crick in his neck and there is a distinct lack of _Finn_ to cuddle up to. At least in his bunk he could curl around a pillow and _pretend_.

Kriff, he’s only spent a single night with Finn, and yet sleeping without Finn in his bed _already_ feels like there’s something missing. It’s like Finn is - is a missing puzzle piece, the other half that Poe has always been waiting for without even knowing it, and - yeah, Poe’s gone romance-heroine again. He shakes his head at himself and huffs a quiet laugh. Maybe he _should_ get himself a nice diaphanous white bodice and a skirt, just so he can get the effect right when he inevitably swoons into Finn’s arms after some act of heroic valor or other. Poe could pull off a skirt, probably. It’s never come up before, but presumably there’s no actual _skill_ involved in wearing one.

The girl mostly stays in the bunkroom, emerging to use the refresher or raid the kitchen for ration bars, once Poe tells her she _can_. She’s quiet and she flinches a little if Poe walks up behind her unexpectedly, so he does his best not to do that after the first time he surprises her in the kitchen. She has nightmares, sometimes, that wake Poe up when she cries out; he doesn’t dare go in and try to comfort her, because - well - she doesn’t trust him, and having an enemy officer looming over her when she wakes is probably _not_ going to make her any more comfortable. Her bruises heal, at least the ones Poe can see, and his stock of bacta goes steadily down, so that’s good, right?

And back at the base they have actual medics who are actually trained in things like traumatized small children, and Poe will be able to hand her over to them and know she’ll be well cared for, and not worry about doing something wrong and scarring her irrevocably by accident. Not that anything he could do would be as bad as what that First Order Commandant _bastard_ did, but - still. Poe doesn’t want to make it worse. The poor kid’s been through enough without him kriffing her life up even more.


	7. Chapter 7

“Resistance Base, this is Commander Poe Dameron, requesting permission to land,” Poe says into the comm, and honestly he has rarely been happier to say those words. It has been a _long_ kriffing week, sleeping in his chair and trying not to traumatize his passenger while also dodging First Order patrols and making hyperspace hops every six hours on average.

“Commander Dameron, it’s good to have you back,” Tabala replies, and Poe can hear the delighted smile in her voice. “Come on down; you’ve got room on the west end of the tarmac.”

“One quick thing,” Poe says, as he aims the transport at the appropriate gap. “I’ve got a passenger who’s going to need non-urgent medical attention.”

There’s a pause. Finally Tabala says, “A passenger?”

“Ten-year-old Stormtrooper cadet,” Poe says. “You...might want to have Finn on hand, too.”

Another pause, and then the General’s voice, warm with laughter. “Dameron, you have _got_ to stop bringing me Stormtroopers.”

“But General,” Poe says, grinning at the console, “they’re a token of my undying affection! Like roses, only - um - with more blasters.”

He’s rewarded with an actual chuckle from the General, and as he sets the transport down on the tarmac, he sees a pair of medics come trotting towards him, with Finn hard on their heels. There’s a soft sound behind him, though, and Poe finishes shutting down the engines and turns to see the girl pressed against the bulkhead, face dead white with terror.

“Hey,” he says, sliding out of his chair onto his knees in front of her and holding out a hand to pat the air helplessly. “Hey, hey, what’s the matter? You’re safe, I promise, no one’s gonna hurt you here. We don’t hurt kids.”

“You - you said medical,” the girl breathes, voice tight with fear. “I don’t - I don’t need medical, sir, I’m fit for duty, I swear -”

“Whoa whoa whoa,” Poe says, eyes wide, and then the transport door slides open and, thank the Force, the shape in the doorway isn’t a medic, it’s _Finn_.

Finn, who takes one look at the scene and clearly understands _exactly_ what is happening.

“At ease, cadet,” he says calmly, and the girl shakes herself a little and falls into a standing rest position, staring up at him wide-eyed. “All new inhabitants of this base are required to have a physical examination,” Finn informs her solemnly. “It is standard procedure.”

Poe watches the tension ease out of her muscles. “Yes, sir,” she says after a moment, and thank the _Force_ , there’s some color in her cheeks again, the look of terror is fading.

“We will accompany you to medical,” Finn adds, glancing at Poe and slanting him a quick, blazingly bright smile. “Commander Dameron _also_ needs a physical, because he has just returned from a mission.”

The girl nods firmly. “Yes, sir,” she says again, and Finn offers Poe a hand up. Poe takes it gladly.

“Thank you,” he murmurs in Finn’s ear. “I had no _idea_ what I was doing.”

Finn chuckles, low and warm, and squeezes Poe’s hand. “Collecting Stormtroopers, apparently,” he says, and leads the way out of the transport, not letting go of Poe’s hand for a moment. Poe tries to keep the silly grin off his face, but it’s not easy - not easy at all.

*

Poe’s physical comes first, mostly so that the girl can watch while Doctor Kalonia looks him over, and see that he comes to no harm. Then Doctor Kalonia calls the girl over, and pulls a curtain so the girl has at least a _little_ privacy for the exam, and Finn gathers Poe up in his arms and kisses him. Poe makes a soft, delighted sound and sags into Finn’s embrace, letting Finn’s endless strength hold him up.

“Force, but I _missed_ you,” he says when they finally have to break the kiss to lean their foreheads together and catch their breaths. “So much, Finn, you have no idea.”

“I think I have _some_ idea,” Finn says, and kisses him again, and _oh_. The first kiss was full of warmth and sweetness; this one is _hungry_ , deep and demanding, and Poe is not going to swoon, he isn’t, he’s not wearing the right _outfit_ to swoon, but _oh_ , he is never going to get tired of being kissed like this. Of being kissed by _Finn_. “I was so worried,” Finn adds, some uncounted time later. “Kriff, is that how you felt while I was gone?”

“Yes,” Poe admits. “It’s not fun, is it?”

“Not even a little bit,” Finn sighs. “I’m so kriffing glad you’re back, Poe.”

“I’m so kriffing glad to _be_ back,” Poe admits. “And next time I’m asking for a two-bunk transport, since I seem to be making a habit of this.” Finn chuckles, and Poe adds, “Oh, and - I may have promised to go rescue an entire training base of cadets.”

Finn drops his forehead to Poe’s shoulder, shaking with laughter. “Of course you did,” he says at last, and raises his head to take Poe’s lips again in a kiss that leaves Poe reeling. “My hero,” Finn adds, quite seriously. “You’d save everyone if you could, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes,” Poe admits. “But I think we’re going to have to disagree on who’s the hero in this relationship.”

Finn chuckles. “Tell you what,” he says, low and sweet like a secret. “You be my hero, and I’ll be yours.”

“Deal,” Poe says breathlessly, and leans in for another of those addictively sweet kisses.

This time they don’t break apart until Doctor Kalonia clears her throat a little ostentatiously and says, “So, gentlemen. It looks like our newest comrade is in pretty good health, overall. I understand you’ve been encouraging her to use bacta on her injuries, Commander Dameron?”

“Yes,” Poe says, turning in Finn’s arms to look at her but not bothering to step away. He can lean against his lover if he wants to - it’s not like it’s going to shock anyone on base, except maybe the girl. “She was...pretty bruised up when I, um, took her, so I told her to use as much bacta as she needed.”

“Well, that was exactly the right thing to do - she’s pretty much healed, reasonably well-nourished, and probably needs a great deal of therapy,” Doctor Kalonia says, all in the same calm tone. It takes Poe a moment to parse the whole sentence, and then he grimaces.

“I figured,” he says grimly. “And I am _not_ qualified to provide it.”

“No,” Doctor Kalonia agrees with a faint smile. “I have a list of people, actually. But she has expressed a desire to be bunked near you, Commander Dameron. Apparently,” her smile gets wider, “you promised to keep her safe, and she believes you.”

“She does?” Poe asks, blankly astonished and more than a little flattered.

“Ask her yourself,” Doctor Kalonia says, stepping to one side. The girl is sitting on the exam table, bare legs dangling, and she looks at Poe with wide and hopeful eyes.

“Um,” says Poe. “I’ve...got a spare room next to mine, the door locks, it’s got its own refresher. If you - wanted to have it?”

The girl nods solemnly, and Poe takes a deep breath. “On one condition,” he adds. “Can you - is there another name you’d like? I can’t call you Clumsy, I just can’t. You aren’t clumsy at all, and I can’t bear to insult you every time I call your name.”

The girl looks startled. “I - I could have another name?” she asks tentatively.

“What’s your designation?” Finn asks.

“QL-1803, sir,” the girl says.

“I’ve always liked the name Clover,” Doctor Kalonia says thoughtfully. “Or Qualla, I have a cousin named Qualla.”

Poe looks curiously at the girl. “You don’t have to pick one of those,” he tells her, “there are lots of other names -”

“Clover,” says the girl. “I like it.”

“Clover,” Poe says, beaming. “Welcome to our base, Clover. I’ll - I’ll show you that room, yeah? And on the way we can ask the quartermaster to send some clothing along for you.”

“Thank you, sir,” Clover says, sliding off the bed and standing to attention. “I’m ready for duty.”

“Um,” says Poe, and Doctor Kalonia, Force bless her, comes to his rescue.

“Not until I say you are, young miss Clover,” she says sternly. “Until then you’re to report to me every morning and I will assign you _light_ duties. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Doctor,” Clover says meekly, and Poe knocks his forehead gently against Finn’s shoulder. Oh stars and planets, what has he just signed himself up for?

“C’mon, buddy, you look wiped - let’s let Clover get settled in so you can debrief with the General and then get some sleep in a real bed,” Finn murmurs, and honestly that sounds like the best plan Poe has ever heard.


	8. Chapter 8

Poe wakes up wrapped in Finn’s arms, and lies there smiling at the ceiling until his bladder becomes too insistent to ignore, then slides very carefully out of bed and tiptoes into the refresher. He comes out feeling - well - _refreshed_ , bright eyed and bushy tailed as he has not been for far too long, and he slides back into bed with a grin on his face that only gets wider when Finn opens his eyes and pulls Poe close for a long, luxurious kiss.

“My turn,” Finn murmurs once they break apart, and clambers out of bed to pad over to the refresher. By the time he comes out, Poe has slipped out of his boxers and is reclining against the pillows. He opens his arms to beckon Finn closer, and Finn beams and steps out of his own pajama pants and comes crawling up the bed until he’s _right there_ , a sweet smile on his lovely face.

Finn pauses, braced above Poe, breath warm against Poe’s lips, and Poe yearns upwards for the touch of skin on skin.

“You said,” Finn says softly, “last time - you said I could ravish you.”

“I stand by that,” Poe says, starting to grin. “Or - well - lie down by it, I guess, unless you want me to stand up.” He shifts as if to do so.

Finn shakes his head, chuckling, and pins Poe neatly to the bed again with one broad, warm hand. Poe is starting to really like that move. “No,” he says, voice warm and sweet with affection. “Don’t stand up. Just - let me? Please?”

“Anything,” Poe says, and means it. “I’m yours. Do with me what you will.”

Finn’s eyes go even darker, and he licks his lips, and his smile is _hungry_. Poe shivers, and a thin whine tears itself from his throat. Oh stars and planets, no one has _ever_ looked at him like that before. It makes every inch of his skin prickle with anticipatory desire, makes his throat go dry, makes his heart beat faster. This - this mad, desperate, ravenous feeling that fills his chest - this was worth waiting for. _Finn_ was worth waiting for.

“Mine,” Finn says, softly, almost wonderingly, and then, _finally_ , he lowers his head and takes Poe’s mouth in a searing, ravenous kiss that makes Poe shake with desire, makes him reach up to clutch at Finn’s shoulders in a desperate attempt to pull him closer, spread his legs wider so that Finn fit so perfectly between them. And then Finn shifts to leave a line of biting kisses down Poe’s jaw and Poe moans so loud it almost echoes, craning his head up to bare his throat to Finn’s hungry mouth.

“Mine to kiss,” Finn says, quietly, voice humming in Poe’s bones. Poe spares half a thought to wonder if that’s the Force he’s hearing in his lover’s voice, and then decides he doesn’t care. It’s _Finn_ , and that’s what matters. “Mine to love,” and oh, those words in that voice, those words from _Finn_ , Poe is half gone already just from that. And then Finn moves up to take Poe’s mouth again, hungry and demanding, and when he pulls away it’s to shift a little so his knees are spreading Poe’s legs just a little bit farther apart and their hips are so kriffing perfectly aligned, and Finn smiles down into Poe’s eyes and rolls his hips in one long, easy, _perfect_ motion, and says, voice all dark heat and adoration, “Mine to _fuck_.”

“Oh Force yes,” says Poe faintly. “ _Please_.”

Finn’s smile gets even wider, and he reaches over to the side of the bed, where the mattress meets the wall, and comes back with a little bottle of lube. Poe can’t help the laugh that tumbles from his mouth. “How long has _that_ been there?”

Finn’s smile gets a little sheepish. “I - um - I’ve been sleeping here while you were gone, because the sheets smelled like you, and - um - well -”

Poe laughs harder, and tugs his lover down for the best kiss Poe can provide. “Kriff, the thought of you in my bed,” he admits, and oh, it _is_ a lovely image, Finn curled up in Poe’s sheets, one broad hand down between his own legs, eyes closed and head thrown back in pleasure. “I like it a _lot_.”

“Really,” Finn says, and that sun-bright grin is back again. “I like your bed better with you in it.” He leans down to kiss Poe again, and Poe gets lost in the pleasure of Finn’s weight on his chest, Finn’s lips against his, the soft happy sounds Finn makes against his lips - and then there’s a warm, slick hand between his legs, and Poe gasps and lets his legs fall open even wider, because Finn’s clever blunt fingers _in him oh kriff yes please_.

“I like my bed better with _you_ in it,” he manages to gasp out before all of his higher brain functions decide to take an unscheduled vacation and he is reduced to rather embarrassing whimpers. Well, they’d be embarrassing if Finn’s eyes didn’t go darker and hungrier and his smile grow wider and brighter and more joyful with each helpless sound that falls from Poe’s lips.

Poe...hasn’t done this before. Well, obviously he hasn’t done _this_ before, what with the whole virgin-before-Finn thing, but he hasn’t even experimented with toys or his own fingers before. It always seemed like a little too much effort for a frankly underwhelming result.

Finn’s fingers are not underwhelming. Sort of - sort of the other thing. Poe had a perfectly good sex ed class in high school, he’s read a couple of anatomy textbooks, he knows what the prostate is, thank you very much, and absolutely none of that prepared him for the feeling of two of Finn’s clever fingers sunk deep inside him, lighting up every nerve he has with pleasure. He’s pretty sure he’s moaning loud enough to be heard in the corridor, but honestly Poe cannot bring himself to care, because Finn is looking down at him with hot, hungry eyes and playing him like a kriffing _fiddle_ and - and -

“You need to fuck me now,” Poe says breathlessly. “ _Please_.”

“Yes,” Finn says, and pulls his fingers free - Poe whines - and then he’s moving, bracing himself above Poe and settling heavy and warm between Poe’s legs, and Poe winds his legs around Finn’s hips and digs his fingers probably a little too hard into Finn’s shoulders and moans, long and low, as Finn slides into him in one long, easy, perfect thrust.

“Dear kriffing stars,” Poe says faintly when Finn pauses, waiting for Poe to adjust to the new and overwhelming sensation. “Is it _always_ like this?”

“No,” Finn says quietly. “It’s better with you.”

“...Oh,” Poe says, utterly lost for words, and hauls Finn down into a messy, hungry, desperate kiss that only ends when Poe has to throw his head back and wail his pleasure to the echoing walls as Finn begins, at last, to move.

Oh Force, oh kriff, oh _help_ , this is why people will kill and die for this, this is why all those romance novel heroines fling sanity and sensibility out the window, this is - this is so good Poe thinks he might die of it, might burn up from the heat of it and become a tiny star, glowing with love and pleasure like a beacon in the void. Finn moves as steadily and inexorably as the tides, and Poe writhes beneath him and cries out his pleasure through a throat gone hoarse with moaning, babbles broken words of love and ecstasy until Finn kisses him silent and then whimpers helplessly into the kiss.

And then Finn breaks the kiss to lean in further until his breath puffs hot against Poe’s ear, and murmurs, “ _Mine_ ,” in a voice that rumbles through Poe’s bones, and Poe comes so hard his vision goes white with it, his last clear thought before he dissolves into ecstasy the knowledge that Finn has followed him over that glorious precipice, Finn’s low sound of pleasure ringing in Poe’s ear.

“Holy...kriffing...hell,” Poe croaks, some time later. Finn chuckles softly, the sound shiver through Poe’s chest from where Finn is sprawled across him. “I think I died.”

“Still breathing,” Finn says, voice warm with amusement, and rolls carefully off of Poe to lie beside him, gathering Poe close. Poe curls into the curve of Finn’s body with a sigh of exhausted satiation.

“Still breathing,” Poe agrees. “Mmmmm. Very good ravishment. Top marks.”

Finn chuckles again. “Oh good,” he says, one hand stroking slow and warm and soothing over Poe’s body. “I like doing things well.”

“Did _me_ well,” Poe says, and laughs when Finn sighs. “Oooh. I’m going to be sore tomorrow and it’s going to be _worth_ it.”

“I love you,” Finn says, so sweet and sincere it makes tears come to Poe’s eyes, and Poe rolls over to wrap himself around Finn and kiss his lover as well as ever he can.

“And I you,” he says. “I’m yours, and you are mine, forever and always.”

“Yes,” says Finn, and Poe can hear the Force ringing in his voice, making the word a vow unbreakable, feels it in his blood and bone, and clings all the more tightly to his beloved. Yes. This is - this is forever, and that is just what Poe desires.

**Author's Note:**

> This will update Monday-Tuesday-Thursday-Friday.
> 
> I am imaginarygolux on tumblr if you want to say hi!


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